Monthly Archives: June 2014

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When it’s too hot to cook and you want something quick and satisfying, homemade smoothies are always the answer. They’re so simple and refreshing, especially now with great summer fruits and vegetables to sip through your straw.

Looking for some fun smoothie ideas? We’ve got your recipe situation covered with a smoothie chock-full of greens, and another that tastes like blueberry pie. There’s a sunny citrus and turmeric number, and an avocado lassi spiced with cardamom, plus much more. Drink up!

What: How Food Blogging & Social Media Came to Town and Transformed How We Talk About FoodWho: Panelists Faith Durand, Joy Wilson, Deb Perelman. Moderater Maxwell Ryan, founder of Apartment Therapy. When: Saturday, October 18. The Grand Tasting from noon to 6pm. Panel starts at 5:15pm. Where: Pier 94 at 55th Street and West Side Highway, NYC. Tickets on sale now.

As a Midwestern gal, born and raised, I do love my corn on the cob. What I don’t love, however, is standing over a boiling pot of water waiting for the cobs to cook on a sweltering summer day. Boiling has also always felt to me like a lot of labor for what amounts to a few minutes of actual cook time.

Enter: the microwave. Ever since we first talked about this method, the microwave has become my favorite tool for quickly cooking a few ears of corn for a weeknight summer dinner.

Dark chocolate ice cubes are a great way to sneak some chocolate into your hot weather routine. These beauties would be perfect as a addition to your afternoon iced coffee or plunked into a glass of cold milk. Add them to chocolate milk if you want to get really crazy.

I find photos of organized pantries to be so seductive, like little fantasy kitchen worlds in which I never make a mess and always serve whole grain pasta. (Fantasy pantries — is that like fantasy football for cooks?)

This pantry is the latest in eye candy around here; isn’t it pretty? It makes me want to line my jars up in a row. And its ‘ll decked out in red, white, and blue, too, just in time for the 4th. Ironically, it’s from a Brit — Jamie Oliver himself.

The thing about eating is that it has to happen, no matter how you’re feeling at the moment about cooking. A busy day, a nasty cold, or plain old just not being in the mood can all keep us away from the chopping board and stove. But hunger is a strong imperative: a growling belly and plummeting blood sugar can only be put off for so long.

Modern life has addressed this dilemma with ferocious efficiency and now we’ve got (blessing or curse?) drive-thru windows, microwave mac’n’cheese and pre-washed bags of lettuce. “Real” cooks frown on all this convenience but I’ll bet most of us have the odd canned soup and frozen pizza hanging around just for those no, I do not want to finely chop six cloves of garlic moments.